VV wrote: What VV said, thank you! We are in a mess! 

 Steely_D wrote: 




lol! Did you custom make the meme just for me?

This post is in response to no-one in particular but just something for me to vent my thoughts.
 
The latest Trump debacle should probably come as no surprise to anyone who has been following him thus far. Perhaps it is "shocking" in that it puts on stark display the misplaced loyalty that Trump has for Putin over NATO and his own Intelligence Agencies. At this point none of us should be surprised that Trump sh*t the bed...    again. What's shocking this time is the volume and overwhelming stench left in the aftermath of his latest "accident". 
 
Trump is clearly a man of very limited intelligence who somehow believes (without any proof to back it up) that he is the smartest person in any room. This dangerous misconception means that he is convinced that he never has to prepare for any important event, listen to the guidance of any advisers, read any intelligence briefings or solicit the feedback of any experts. When you are the smartest person in the room... all of that is totally unnecessary and doing so might actually send an unintentional message to others that you may not be. Gotta keep up appearances. I have to believe that his advisers gave him clear directives as to how he should approach Putin with the indictments, Crimea... etc. during this recent meeting but he likely didn't listen to any of them and went off-script. Going off script of course meant that he couldn't satisfactorily answer the pointed question of who he believed more... Russia's denials of meddling or his Intelligence agencies' case for meddling. Thus adding to the poo-pile. 

In Trump's mind, the Muller investigation and any indictment of Russians coming from that inquiry is tainted. It's tough to accept that the indictments or anything Muller is involved in is valid when you have been spending a great deal of your time and energy bashing it and calling it a "witch hunt". I also believe that  (all evidence to the contrary) his ego won't allow him to accept that he was in any way helped in his general election win. No other president has been helped in this way and Trump isn't about to admit to being the first. 

Lastly, the ironic thing about Trump is that even though he is though of as a great "builder/developer" he has been the exact opposite as president. He has distinguished himself as being a destroyer. Attempting to roll back every Obama executive decision that he can find, cripple Obamacare, pull out of the Paris Climate Accord and Iran Nuclear deal. He has very little to show in the way of constructive accomplishments while in office as accomplishing that would require diplomacy, compromise and unity of purpose. Skills in which he is sorely lacking.
 
So I guess we will be relegated to many more repeat performances of this ignorant, unintelligent, unprepared, egotistical, squat wreaking-ball of a President taking chunks of goodwill out of our alliances and rescinding agreements while inexplicably cozying up to dictatorial despots. The result is that the rest of his administration and the GOP will be left bewildered and scrambling to clean up the current mess while mentally preparing for the next. Pass the baby-wipes.            

 sirdroseph wrote: 

 Red_Dragon wrote: 
Bwa ha ha!

.. and what I find particularly distasteful is this sudden casting of western Europeans as "foes".. who on Earth did you pick that up from?  

In what way Kurtster, pray tell, has any country in the entire western alliance ever been your enemy? Have we threatened your borders? Your institutions? Have we reneged on respecting the rights of your citizens? Have we waterboarded any of them?  Have we enforced regime change on you? Held you to ransom? Have we not supported you against our better judgement in all sorts of military escapades?  Please go ahead.. give us your sob story, I'm genuinely curious.

 

 kurtster wrote: 
Whoa, hold on there cowboy.  Not sure what I find more distasteful, the cynical but knowledgeable manipulation of someone like Putin playing foreign leaders like puppets, or the hydrocephalic Yankee swagger of the US forcing others to be "rescued" from their imaginary demons, and then claiming we are freeloading.

First:  no, Europe has not been freeloading its defense to the US. Both France and the UK (now in doubt) have their own viable nuclear defense which they pay for out of their own budgets. Germany (like Japan) doesn't have a nuclear program, obviously. The "huge" outlays for the US military are not disputed. But, nobody outside the US asked for them. This is solely an internal US decision and has much more to with lobbying by your industry. 

Second: "allowed Europe to expand into socialism"  there is so much wrong in this one clause. Small reminder: many European economies are very stable, very wealthy and have fantastic social programs and this has nothing to do with not having to pay for defense. Europe has paid its own way since WWII. The one exception would be the Marshall plan which was brilliant but also had behind it the ulterior motive of shoring up a front line of defense against communist Europe.

Third: "the whole flipping' free world has taken the US for granted and milked it for all it could." Seriously, Archie Bunker, you need to travel a bit more. If you have been milked by anybody, it is by US corporate interests, which have been fully backed by the US military. The fact that they might have kept their profits hidden, avoided tax using offshore havens, and had their own interests more at heart than the US heartland is not something you can blame on the countries you "protected" by force..  Chile, Iraq, etc. the list goes on.  Seriously, I'd love to see you confront an orphaned Iraqi family with that accusation.. what do you want them to do? Pay for the missile that some dumb-arse drone operator fired at their innocent Dad? Really? C'mon you freeloaders, that missile was really expensive! Hork up some cash!!

Fourth: "Our military presence in Germany isn't because we couldn't trust Russia after WW II.  It is because we couldn't trust Germany." This is simply Orwellian. Whatever happened to the Cold War in your brain? did that just somehow get erased from your memory?
 

 black321 wrote: 
I have always thought that energy use (wind, solar, coal, oil, wood, dried dung, whatever) and environmental concerns are really an accounting problem. Huh? Accounting is about tracking costs, right? Amortizing expenses over time, stuff like that. Please accountants, allow me to grossly oversimplify.

So the thing is with fossil fuels, well really all energy sources, there is the cost of extraction, and the price you can get once it's extracted. The price is tracked closely, as $ per KWH. But what about the costs? Sure, pretty much all technologies require major capital investment (except wood and dried dung, but I digress). Those costs are recorded in the books. But those are only the front-end costs, and do not tell the whole (accounting) story.

What is the cost of, say, dirty air? ER visits from asthma attacks, early-onset COPD, increased sick days/reduced productivity, etc. etc. Those costs are not captured, instead they fall on us. Tax dollars spent to clean up, say, PCBs from power stations. Millions of tons of contaminated soil: who pays to have it disposed of? And where? In the early days of oil, crude was 'stored' in open pits. Yep, right there on the ground. We are STILL paying for that little folly. Gas station owners, to clean the pavement, would just take the nozzle and hose the place down with gasoline. I am not kidding. Gas was that cheap. Because the accounting wasn't there. Still isn't. We don't pay the true cost of fossil fuels, because somebody else will. Not now, and maybe not in dollars, but somebody will have to pay. 

c.

 black321 wrote: 
Yes, Germany gets most of its petro energy from Russia and has for years, to the best of my knowledge, especially natural gas.

What is the purpose of NATO ?  It was put together to counter the threat of the USSR to Europe post WW II.  The USSR is now long gone.  NATO should have been ended at the same time as well.  Europe has been primarily defended since WW II on the backs of the US taxpayer.  That has allowed Europe to expand into socialism because they did not have to pay for their own defense and they got quite used to it and took it for granted, all the while condemning the US for its huge outlays for its defense budget.  Europe would be a much different place if it had to pay its own way since WW II. 

The whole flippin free world has taken the US for granted and milked it for all it could.  Of course we had strings attached.  Our military presence in Germany isn't because we couldn't trust Russia after WW II.  It is because we couldn't trust Germany.

Getting back to NATO.  It's a globalist / military complex thing.  It requires that military equipment be standardized throughout the network so that it can function as one.  Who is the primary beneficiary of that ?  The neocons and their military industrial complex.

Sorry for the incomplete thoughts.  Wish I had more time but I must go on the road now.  More later.

 black321 wrote: 




Just another layer of screwdness! lol

 sirdroseph wrote: 
couldnt we fix this in a generation?  assuming we found the right tech, and poor nations had less incentive to procreate?  But just think of what a negative growth rate would do to the economy!  The cabal would never agree.  

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote: 

This may be a rather idealistic view. 

Jared Diamond in Chapter 14 of Guns, Germs, & Steel.  sought to show that above a certain population density, tribalism as a system (egalitarian or otherwise) will not work. I don't know about global fascism, but Diamond's point is that some sort of centralized, highly organized and structured society based on laws (what Diamond refers to as "kleptocracy") is the inevitable result when we run out of space and have to start packing more people onto less terrain.

From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy

 black321 wrote: 




No, as I explained below it would not work because the technological advances have artificially created unsustainable levels of population. If not for these advances, population would have naturally levelled off as nature intends. In other words, we are quite screwed.

 sirdroseph wrote: 
Would there be a tree left?  Clean stream from all the s#$t?  Not to mention the air pollution, and resource wars...or are you counting on famine, plagues...to keep the population down?  Sorry, not trying to be sarcastic, but just dont see how this would work.  

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote: 





No worries! I do not support Margaret Sanger's vision nor Bill Gates which is why I do not want this to happen.

 black321 wrote: 




You misunderstand me, when I say going backwards I mean pre industrial revolution. It all went to shit in the mid 1800s.

 sirdroseph wrote: 
why not forward? find ways of being more efficient with our natural resources, and cleaner too...raise everyones standard of living.  The White Knight of tech is possibly our only way out of this mess...that's why I'm opposed to going backwards with oil, coal...and dont mind subsidizing the extra cost for new, alternative energy.  The cost analysis is all wrong...it should be viewed as a startup cost, and while some failures are inevitable, scale and efficiencies for the right tech will eventually take over.  

 sirdroseph wrote: 
 

pardon me???!!

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote: 




Not completely, there are of course many shades in between, I was just explaining my hesitancy for the rush to utopia. Not to mention the numbers just don't add up regarding human population and resources. If the entire planet were equal, we basically would be a third world planet. I have often said the only true utopia can be achieved by technologically going backwards but the population genie is out of the bottle and a culling would be necessary just like any other animal which is all we are really.

 sirdroseph wrote: 
Fair point.. I too would prefer the friction of tribalism to global fascism.  Lordy, I hope they are not our only choices.